Jury finds housing contractor guilty on weapons charge

WEST CHESTER – A 52-year-old housing contractor, with a string of arrests and convictions stemming back to the late 1970s, was taken in handcuffs from President Judge James P. MacElree II’s courtroom on Monday after a one-day trial found him guilty on charges of illegally possessing a firearm.

A Common Pleas Court jury took less than 30 minutes to find Bradley Comp guilty of possessing a Colt .45 semi-automatic handgun, even though as a convicted felon he was legally prohibited from owning or possessing the weapon. Police found the gun in a briefcase with Comp’s initials stored in a bedroom closet during a search connected to an unrelated case.

After the verdict, MacElree set bail for Comp, who had been free awaiting trial following his arrest earlier this year, at $500,000 pending sentencing. When he was unable to post that amount, sheriff’s deputies led him from the courtroom.

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Comp now faces a possible sentence of five to 10 years in state prison on the weapons charge. He may also face the possibility of additional time in jail for violating the terms of a probation sentence from 1993 where he was convicted of insurance fraud.

The prosecutor in the trial argued that the case was a simple matter. He said the .45 handgun had been found in a house that Comp owned and was in the process of building, and, because he had been convicted of arson in 1987, Assistant District Attorney Sean Poll argued it was against the law for him to own or possess the gun, which was last registered to his late father.

Because the gun was in Comp’s home, where he had easy access to it, Poll said he had “constructive possession” of the firearm, even though police did not find it on him when they conducted their December 2011 search .

Comp’s attorney, Scott Kramer of Media, instead argued that Comp had not possessed the gun, and added that it belonged to his son, Chad Comp. In testimony on the stand Monday, however, Chad Comp stumbled in trying to explain to the jury how he had locked the gun in the briefcase with a combination code that only he knew, thus keeping his father from having any access to it.

Under cross-examination by Poll, Chad Comp was asked to use his personal combination to lock the briefcase as he claimed to have done. He could not, however, because the manufacturer’s plastic seals were still in place leaving the case open and unlocked.

Judge MacElree, explaining the case to a group of visiting high school students on Tuesday, said it appeared that the jurors had not accepted Chad Comp’s version of events. “Basically, he was lying through his teeth about the whole situation,” MacElree said.

The case arose after Comp reported in April 2010 that there had been a burglary at the house he was finishing on Township Road in East Brandywine. Included in the items taken were $25,000 in custom made kitchen cabinets, he said.

Lt. Gene Babetski of the townshio police, who investigated the crime, later learned that Bradley Comp had filed an insurance claim for $32,000, telling the insurance adjuster that the police had been unable to find the cabinets – even before the burglary was reported. The claim was denied.

A township housing inspector later told police that he had seen cabinets matching the description of those reported stolen installed in the kitchen. After several months of investigation, Babetski secured a warrant to search the house for the cabinets. When he did so, he found the handgun in a closet in the briefcase. During a taped interview, Comp told him he knew the gun was there.

Comp, whose family lived on Grubb’s Mill Road in Willistown for many years, first came in contact with police in 1979.

In May 1985, Comp was involved in an attack on a Latino family at an apartment in Kennett Square he owned and with who he was having a landlord tenant dispute. According to court records, Comp and his then-wife Suzanne hired two men to rough the husband up. The man was ultimately shot as he stood in his front hallway, and Comp was sentenced to six to 23 months for conspiracy. He was prosecuted by then-Assistant District Attorney Anthony Sarcione, who is now a Common Pleas Court judge.

In the case that led to his felony conviction, Comp was arrested in 1987 by state police for arranging to burn down a house under construction that he was working on. He hired a construction worker to pour gasoline at the house so that he would not have to fix a structural problem with the roof. Later he approached the contractor who was building the house in East Marlborough and offered to show him how to claim inflated insurance costs.

He was sentenced in 1988 to 15 months to 30 months in state prison, but was allowed to serve his time in county prison.

Then in late 1991, he was charged by Willistown police who discovered he had reported a vintage 1960 Corvette stolen, when in fact it turned out that Comp had disassembled the car and sold its parts to a Berks County antique ca dealer, who recognized him later. In 1993, he was found guilty of insurance fraud at trial and later sentenced to 11 1/2 to 23 months in county prison.

Since then, Comp had been in and out of prison on state and county parole violations.

He will be sentenced on the gun charge at a future date. Poll said on Tuesday that Comp is still facing charges of insurance fraud and false reports concerning the alleged theft of the kitchen cabinets.